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The Champions
Coming into the season the general consensus around the media and fans alike was that the Premier League title would come down to a straight up battle between perennial champions Manchester City and Arsenal. It was generally thought that Liverpool would fall off from title contention given that they had lost their long time coach Jurgen Klopp and their new man in charge Arne Slot would need some time to adjust to the rigours of the Premier League.
At the time of writing, however, those pre season predictions appear slightly off and it is actually Slot’s Liverpool who have the strongest underlying data and who are trending to come out at the end of the season as Champions. At the time of writing this article Sportsmonks underlying xPoints data tells us that Slot’s Liverpool are generating 2.07 points per game, a massive 0.21 ahead of the next team in the league.
Given the performances that we have seen so far this season from Liverpool and the fact that the likes of Mohamed Salah in particular are in such good form suggest that this form may well continue across the rest of the season.
We have to go down our list slightly to find the likes of Manchester City, who are generating 1.74 xPoints per match, and Arsenal, who are generating 1.75 xPoints per match. It is fair to say, however, that both of these teams are so talented in terms of the players at their disposal and so well coached that we would expect both to improve in terms of their underlying data to the point that they will be able to challenge for the title at the end of the season.
There is one other team that we have to consider as potentially being able to challenge at the top of the table come the end of the season and that is Ange Postecoglu’s Tottenham Hotspur. So far this season the North London side are generating an average of 1.79 xPoints per match.
At the moment if we are using underlying data from Sportmonks then we would expect the top 4 at the end of this season to read Liverpool, Manchester City, Arsenal and then Spurs.
European surprises?
While we have predicted Manchester City, Arsenal and Spurs to make up the top 4 behind Liverpool come the end of the season they are not actually the closest of teams to Liverpool if we rank the table based on the xPoints data from Sportmonks. The second and third ranked sides are actually Fulham, averaging 1.86 points per game, and Bournemouth who are averaging 1.82 points per game.
While both Fulham and Bournemouth have had extremely strong starts to the season with solid underlying data supporting their performances on the pitch it is fair to say that this represents a slight overperformance in terms of the respective strength of their squads. Across an entire season we expect that their performances will drop off and regress closer to pre season expectations, lower mid table for both, although we still think that given the start to the season they have had we would expect to see them end the season higher than they would have been predicted to at the start of the season.
Given how well they have started the season and indeed given the quality of the coaching from Marco Silva at Fulham and Andoni Iraola at Bournemouth there is every chance that we could see both sides qualify for Europa League or Europa Conference football going into next season.
The relegation battle
We can, of course, also use underlying data and xPoints to see which teams are currently on track to finish in the relegation places come the end of the season. There are a number of clubs who are currently trending towards the bottom of the Premier league table with all three newly promoted sides, Leicester City, Ipswich Town and Southampton struggling and the likes of Everton and Wolves also performing towards the bottom of the table.
Using xPoints data as a reference for our current predictions, however, shows that the bottom three in the Premier league come May are likely to be Wolves in 18th position, with an average xPoints of 0.91, then Leicester City in 19th position, with an average xPoints of 0.64 and then Ipswich Town in 20th position, with an average xPoints of 0.62.
Southampton are, of course, also in danger although our ranking has them in 16th place on 1.06 xPoints per 90 while Everton are just outside of the relegation places with 0.91 xPoints per 90, the same level as Wolves.
These five sides are almost certain to be fighting it out for survival come the end of the season.
Conclusion
Using xPoints from Sportsmonk can give us a genuine insight in to the performance and relative strengths of sides in the Premier League and it is interesting to see which teams are overperforming the narrative of their season so far and which might be underperforming their expectations to this point.
